Is that about 15% of it is skill and the other 267% (numbers are approximate) is psychology. Halcyon is turning out to be such a damn tease, I’d honestly thought I’d have finished her by now and would be showing you FO photos – especially since Southern Ontario is having the rainiest rainy summer in decades and so all the damp cloudy greenspace would probably be perfect for me to romp around in an aran sweater and pretend that it’s Scotland or something – but no, the finishing is turning out to be the psychological journey that lasts forever. I’d forgotten that part. This sweater has been on the needles for 3 and a half months (with long periods of not-knitting, I admit), so it’s been at least that long since I’ve had to do any serious sweater finishing.

The thing with this sweater is that not only do you need to knit through all those nice beautiful baroque cables acoss all that (albeit yummy) kilometre and a half or so of wool, you then need to knit a collar once you start piecing them together. I always manage to forget that collars need to happen. There was also the other part I forgot about, which is that since this is a saddle shoulder aran, that adds 4 separate seams just at the shoulders, before you can even start to do the sleeves and sides. And then if, say, you start to seam up the saddle shoulders and realize that the shoulder bits are actually a half an inch shorter than they need to be, that could in theory set you back two days while you shore up the energy to go back and knit those extra few rows.

Thankfully I’m onto the sleeves and sides now and I can feel the home stretch kicking in. I’m hoping very much that the shoulders will not make me look like a football player, and that the hem will fit comfortably across the hips just like my measurements told me it would, and that when it is all done I can skip around wearing it cackling ‘MINE MINE ALL MINE NOT YOURS’. You know, like you do.

I’ve also been cheating. I started the Next Sweater.

Note that it is neither cabled, nor teal blue. It’s the Hourglass Pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, in Malabrigo Worsted (here in ‘Holly Hock’) which according to Ravelry turns out to be the 2nd most popular yarn for this project. It’s very, very yummy. I’m using two balls at once and am alternating every 3 rows, to combat any issues with swooshing or dye inconsistencies between kettle batches, and so far I think it’s working beautifully. It’s keeping a nice mottled texture smack dab between pink and purple. What’s not to love?

This week, for real this time, something is getting finished. With the stash as my witness, I will finish a sweater this week.

I agree with you about the weather calling for a sweater! I was in Buffalo and had to go to the store and buy a sweater because I ddin’t pack one (silly of me!). I *love* the purple! And Malabrigo might be my favorite yarn.